


She Forgot I Hung the Moon

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Designing Women
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22646617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: A routine discussion about chili dogs.
Relationships: Suzanne Sugarbaker/BJ Poteet, Suzanne Sugarbaker/Mary Jo Shively
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	She Forgot I Hung the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Au where BJ and Suzanne interact. Don’t tell me I’m the only one who would’ve wanted to see that.

Mary Jo is halfway through a story about her neighbor’s trying to keep the grass clippings from his riding lawn mower out of his pool. She’s gesticulating wildly, her hair bouncing as she moves her hands and mouth, and everyone is watching her in rapt attention.

But the door opens—swishing even more dramatically than her very vivacious anecdote.

Suzanne enters. She sweeps through the threshold with authority and panache. 

It’s warm enough for mowing, so it’s warm enough for Suzanne to be draped in silk without an overcoat. A belted wrap dress, clinging in all the right places. Eyes drift toward her against their will and follow her movements. As much as she loves to be the center of attention, she hardly ever tries to be. She just is organically.

And now she’s adjusting her ensemble and setting herself strategically onto the settee. 

“Don’t let me distract y’all,” Suzanne says as she reaches toward the coffee table for a magazine.

“Oh no distraction at all,” Mary Jo says sarcastically, having already paused her own story.

Suzanne doesn’t even blink. Just takes up the magazine and flips through it haughtily.

BJ from her far desk looks at both of them in turn, crooks an eyebrow, says,

“You know I don’t go in for personal drama, and I don’t want to get in the middle of anything. But back in Texas… This sort of thing would’ve been settled much easier.”

Mary Jo turns her head and scowls at her, and Suzanne pauses turning a page to stare into the mid-distance for a moment to collect herself before she says,

“I’ve known plenty of Texans. In my experience it’s always been chili dogs and rodeo. What would you have me do, Mrs. Poteet? Ride a bucking bronco?” Suzanne scoffs and then straightens her spine against the stiff Victorian horsehair backing of the divan, waits smugly for a reply.

“Well that’s an option. A very good option, in fact,” BJ says in her slow considering way. “But I, personally, am more invested in chili dogs,” she finishes in her abrupt explosive way.

There is a pause in which they all look at each other: Mary Jo’s jaw set, Julia’s brow furrowed, Charlene’s pencil suspended, Carlene’s mouth agape, BJ’s face fixed, Suzanne’s eyes penetrating.

Finally.

“We’re all more invested in chili dogs,” Mary Jo says suggestively. Suzanne straightens her spine even more, incensed:

“You’re so little and cute! You don’t have to worry about saturated fat!”

BJ again looks at both of them, gaze landing on Suzanne, says,

“I’m not sure that’s the part of ‘chili dogs’ that’s supposed to be the take away.”

Mary Jo slinks back at that, flops back into her chair.

Suzanne huffs, obtuse—maybe deliberately or maybe inherently. She says,

“Oh do enlighten me, then. I know y’all think I’m stupid. So why shouldn’t you explain in detail what you mean?”

Carlene is slack-jawed at her desk, confused and searching and trading glances with Charlene. Julia has her lips pressed tightly together at her desk, knowing and silent.

“‘Chili dogs,’” BJ says. “You don’t recognize the metaphor?”

Suzanne considers, rolls her eyes, says noncommittally at first,

“Oh I get it. A test.” She becomes more animated: “Metaphors don’t use like or as! So there!” She preens for a second and then drops her hands to her lap, looks sullen. “But a metaphor compares something to something else.” She finishes quietly, “And I don’t know what you’re comparing.”

Julia opens her mouth and then closes it, looks pleadingly at BJ. BJ nods and stands, rounds her desk.

BJ sees what Suzanne’s saying. And she also sees what’s happening in the electric air. The happenings and not happenings. She collates her thoughts, the thoughts she thinks others are thinking, finally says,

“Well. Some people like hot dogs and some people like tacos…”

“And it’s all junk food! And I eat when I’m upset! Fine! Let’s just drop it.” Suzanne aggressively turns another page in the magazine in her lap.

But it’s not dropped. And if it is dropped it’s caught mid-air and examined.

“This isn’t about that,” BJ says.

Suzanne raises her eyes skeptically.

There’s a long pause, air thick.

“Let me put it to you this way,” BJ starts again. “Elizabeth Taylor has gone through many sizes—”

“But everyone prefers her in National Velvet,” Suzanne says, voice clogged with self-loathing. It’s not exactly the thought BJ had wanted to encourage, but it’s close enough.

“But her most lauded performance is in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,’” BJ says.

“That’s Fat Elizabeth Taylor,” Suzanne says. Again not exactly what BJ had intended but again close enough. Something with a jumping off point this time, though.

“Well yes. Fat, talented Elizabeth Taylor,” BJ says. 

Suzanne pierces her with a cutting glance, but BJ continues:

“Who wouldn’t want Elizabeth Taylor in her prime, filled out and filled in? You’re going to tell me you wouldn’t bang Fat Elizabeth Taylor? I don’t believe you. Anyone in their right mind would fuck Elizabeth Taylor in any context.”

Suzanne’s eyes go wide and wild. 

BJ knows she’s hit a nerve and relishes the sensitivity of that raw nerve. She wants to poke at it, raise a visible bruise. It’s her choleric nature to create an argument just for argument’s sake, especially when it’s an argument worth arguing.

“You’re just flattering me. I’m used to that,” Suzanne says, attempting to pull herself together.

“I don’t usually do flattery. Unless there’s something to back it up,” BJ says. Not exactly flirtatious but not not that. Not entirely, anyway, or not not entirely.

But however much has been shown or seen, there are no scraps to shovel into a haphazard pile. Suzanne is not a heap of nonsense so much as she is a Tetris game—sometimes perfect symmetry but most times stacking unevenly, frustrating blocks that should go together but don’t.

They look at each other across the room.

“I’m not some commodity to be traded,” Suzanne says.

“And don’t I know it! A volatile market at the very least,” BJ says.

“If you could even for one moment talk plain without any over-the-top Texas dialect or bullshit business jargon, you might be attractive!” Suzanne says. There’s a lucid, piercing glimmer on Suzanne’s flushed face.

“I might be attractive regardless,” BJ says.

“Don’t press your luck,” Suzanne says.


End file.
